Mother and her Green Dishes

                Mother’s green dishes have always been special and perhaps reveal some of her best qualities.  At a young age, I welcomed the occasional opportunities I had to eat pudding in a special stemmed glass or have tea parties using the cups and saucers.  These green dishes, known as Depression Glass, had been available in the late 20s to the early 40s, even before my mother’s birth in 1942, and had been collected and kept in her family over the years.  Many pieces came from gas station or movie theater sales as incentives to spend what little money people had.

                But somehow, a vast assortment of the glassware came to be housed in mother’s corner hutches and good-sized buffet.  The times she proudly used them were for church daytime circle meetings or for women’s PTA gatherings in our dining room.  Curiously, I don’t know why we never used them for special occasions ourselves, although the fairly inexpensive glassware came to be of some value.

                Mother, like many women in our neighborhood and in that time, was a stay-at-home mom.  She was very involved in grade school activities and participated in many ways at our church, easily within walking distance.  Although I earned a teaching degree, my personal aspirations and activities as a young mother were much like hers.  After teaching high school English four years, I willingly stayed home as our three children were young and therefore, also had the opportunity to join the mothers’ club and be even more active in Christian activities, not always connected to a particular church.

                At the age of 20 after my older brother’s birth, mother began to experience what would be called post partem psychosis today, later to be identified as manic depression.  How her life would have been different apart from this serious health issue will never be known.  I once asked a young psychiatrist how we can know where the illness ends and the character begins; he struggled with the same distinction.  But as I became a teenager, I knew I purposely would not be like her in some ways.  For example, she did not manage household issues well, like getting the laundry done or keeping the house clean which became a source of contention with my father. 

                So much has been discovered about the brain and the chemical make-up that affects our behavior.  I’m sorry my parents had to struggle through shock treatments and other therapies during times when resources were so much less and the social stigma—that still remains to a degree—so much greater on such health issues.  However, despite these hardships in my family, I am thankful for mother’s good qualities, including her social friendliness, her constancy toward God, and her willingness to have fun and use those green dishes even for our private parties.